Can local communities become more sustainable in energy? Could Biogas help?

Bio Gas for Hockerton?

Sustainable Hockerton ran a successful work shop late last year on community bio gas and its potential in and around Hockerton. It explained how community biogas could contribute to local resilience of energy, organic waste recycling and production of compost. Sixteen local people attended and all contributed a lot to the event hosted by Hockerton Housing Project in their resource center.

The workshop was run by members of the ISABEL a Community biogas project team. Their website ISABEL-PROJECT.EU yellow block on the right to ‘Get in touch’ for our UK contacts.

ISABEL is an EU funded project involving a team from Global Biotechnology Transfer Foundation which is a not for profit organisation based in Lincolnshire involved in developing the bio economy and University of Surrey Centre for Research in Social Simulation (CRESS). The ISABEL project promotes community biogas linked to social innovation as a way to use bio wastes and increase local energy and food production. It is collaborating locally with communities and at the same time creating a network, which will facilitate the development of community biogas across England.

Hockerton Housing Project was in the vanguard of communities that showed interest in exploring the possibilities of community biogas. Simon Tilley of Hockerton Housing Project said in the workshop on the 11th November, “Benefits of community biogas include, a storable renewable fuel, healthy rich compost suitable for food production and a use for organic “waste”.”

Davide Poggio ISABEL Community biogas workshop organiser said, “Attendees learnt about the long term aspirations of the ISABEL community biogas project. We explored together with the local community the potential for community biogas for Hockerton village and looked for local people and resources such as feedstock for biogas available in Hockerton and the surrounding area. We welcomed the participation of all members of the Hockerton community! The workshop is also relevant for any surrounding communities that are interested in the model of community biogas. We considered local values, aspirations and desires around food, energy and waste futures. We explored prototyping possible business models which are able to capture social, environmental and economic values of community biogas. Potential obstacles and synergies between different local stakeholders were also be considered as well as the next steps in developing a community project.

We have established links with communities particularly in the Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire area initially – but we interested in hearing from other communities interested in exploring the possibilities of community biogas further.